32 réponses à ce sujet

[Zehealingman]

What a strange, strange journey it has been. Ever since IGN and Bioware released the MP trailer and this forum has opened its gates for us, we laughed, cried and had fun. But the important question is: What should we/Bioware take with us/them into MEAMP? What features/content did you like? What did you hate? What made you go ''Bioware wtf pls''?

 

Personally, I believe that DAMP had potential. A dungeoncrawler set in Thedas? Yes please! Why not?

 

But then so much has happened, like the infamous keybug. Do you folks still remember how people playing as elementalist got kicked left and right? How so many people raged on their mics when those damn mages used their firestorm? Good times.

 

And, of course, the first ''DLC'' for DAMP, Destruction. Adding those animals which tend to get themselves stuck in a wall, under the map, etc... not such a good idea.

 

The time between Destruction and Dragonslayer was also ... well, you know. But that made the release of Dragonslayer even sweeter - and, in my opinion, it was a fine DLC. 3 fully voiced characters, 1 map with 3 different looks and dragons! Nice job, Bioware. Thing is, I exspected more Dragonslayer like DLCs. Maps, characters, items, you name it. I am not saying that the SS/Sareba ... Saree ... you know who are bad additions, not at all, but I believe that one more ''big'' DLC would have helped DAMP in the long run. (And the leaks + the

 

Of course, we also need to remember that Bioware has added 3 new factions to DAMP, which is good. Although they ''simply'' ported them over from Descend/Trespasser/SP, it gave us something DAMP needed: variety.

 

Although I don't like the fact that we ''only'' have 4 maps (Deeproads map, anyone?), I don't think that the lack of variety is what stopped DAMP from reaching its full potential. What did stop it?

 

Bugs. Whether it's bugged spells, items or even matchmaking itself, the amount of bugs is, sit venia verbo, ridiculous.

 

At this point I have to mention another good thing though: BW's interaction with the community. Some of us might still remember a certain ... incident between a DAMP youtuber and someone working for BW. But after that incident communication was great in my opinion. Nice job!

 

What do I really want to see in MEAMP?

 

-) Keep the interaction with the community up!

-) More maps.

-) Keep an eye out for bugs. Seriously.

 

What did you think of DAMP? Did it live up to its hype? What did you hate about it?

 

[Yallegro]

 

Personally, I believe that DAMP had potential. 

 

 

I believe it never had potential. All signs point to EA never providing the resources to turn DAMP into a high-grade product.

All praise should go to the dev who worked their love into it in spite of everything.

 

 What did you hate about it?

 

 

Been discussed hundreds of times

[Beerfish]

I think the game engine and map layout strategy sucks for mp and they soon found that testing maps was a horror show as far as things bugging out.  The terrible initial stability of the product chased away a fairly big chunk of people who may have become addicted to it.  They were also forced by performance reasons to make things strict as far as region locking goes which divides a community to some extent. 

 

Some good things came out of DAMP and of course some bad things.  We can only hope they can sift through the debris and keep good things and change bad things for ME4.

[Minuos]

Personally, I believe that DAMP had potential. A dungeoncrawler set in Thedas? Yes please! Why not?

 

This sums things up quite well. I wanted to enjoy the game, but between bugs and a lack of content, they didn't make it easy. Even the last patch, with the ridiculously low drop rates and oversized challenges, just seemed disrespectful. "Not wasting enough time? Waste more with no additional content!"

 

Basically, I'll be wary about the multiplayer aspect of any future BioWare title. Not doing this again. The best thing I got out of it were the people I now have on my friends list, but I guess I should have read the warning signs.

 

I'm not a sycophant, so while I do appreciate the effort that was put into the game, I have as much respect for them as they seem to have for the player's time.

 

What do I really want to see in MEAMP?

 

Progressive loot. Stack the duplicates and remove them when said stack is maxed. Don't subject us to an unplayable game over a holiday period and force us to figure out the game mechanics for ourselves. Tooltips exist for a reason.

 

More to say, but not much of it positive; so I'll leave it at that.

[Proto]

I look forward to Third Race's reply. 

[ThatBruhYouDK]

I look forward to Third Race's reply.

^This...reply Race! We are waiting!

[sabreracer]

 

. The best thing I got out of it were the people I now have on my friends list,

 

 

New fun friends are always worth the price you pay in bugs n' other stuff and they are what keep you coming back in spite of the "urgh not again" factor.

 

While I do enjoy this with my friends when they're not on I play other things.

[Lil Mantis]

I enjoyed my time playing the DAIMP.  Met a lot of cool people.   I've been playing the DAIMP since release.  This is possibly the longest I've ever stuck around for a console MP.   I do enjoy the Mass Effect series, so I'm hopeful that the folks I met in DAIMP will also be playing the latest ME MP.  

[Kenny Bania]

It was one big ****** disaster. A massive fail from beginning to end.

 

The only thing I'd like to see retained is being given the option to exit games in progress in a lobby.

[TheThirdRace]

I look forward to Third Race's reply.

 
 

^This...reply Race! We are waiting!

[TheThirdRace]

Honestly, I was very surprised to read those comments! You made me laugh a lot...

And now I feel compelled to say something, but it's gonna be later because reasons...

[Proto]

If you do write an end of support "review" research paper, you should do it in your own thread. I'll add my 2cents. May need to wait a bit though. I'm personally waiting for BIlly to unleash the cracken like he did with the "old gen" end of support thread.

[orange_apples]

One thing I liked about daimp was how the team dynamic influenced what the party could do. I know late game opening chests was a waste of time but it was cool how different classes could accomplish different tasks.

In mass effect for those who haven't played you have 3 class categories and 6 class types:
Soldier: assault
Engineer: tech
Adept: biotic
Infiltrator: assault/tech
Sentinel: tech/biotic
Vanguard: assault/biotic

While not lock off sections of maps it would be cool to see classes influence the missions like in the hacking missions tech classes get a bonus to hacking speed with engineers having even better hack speed than infiltrators and sentinels.

[Jugger nuggss]

I can't really complain. $60 for a year of gameplay. Not a bad deal

[Yallegro]

I can't really complain. $60 for a year of gameplay. Not a bad deal

 

They'd like their single player back now plz.

[Eelectrica]

I guess this is what happens when the MP component doesn't generate the revenue they might have been hoping for through Microtransactions.

The MP component wasn't really ready for whatever reason so I think that put a few people off who gave it a chance.

They did some cool and different things, like Zither with his combinations to bypass the 4 ability limited and the new mechanics for isabella that were fun to mess with for a while.

Needed more maps, and fewer empty lobbies and DC issues.

 

At the end of the day, for me, I feel like I'm better off playing a character in the main game who can actually progress, whether it be story or gear. I gave DAIMP a chance but it just didn't capture the magic of ME3.

Not that I can complain since I would never buy platinum. Not interested in a virtual lucky dip. I purchased the main game and all SP DLC's so I feel I paid enough already.

[TheThirdRace]

With all the good intentions in the world, I'm gonna try to keep it under control and make this post smaller than a research paper. I doubt this is gonna be a short post by any mean, but at least I will be able to say I tried

First thing first, let see what DAMP did right:

• Ton of fun for 0$ (technically MP is free, you pay for the SP)
• Joining a game in progress lands you in the lobby and not in game like in ME3MP
• The store is light years faster than was ME3MP
• The level of interaction Biowave devs did with their community (forums, twitch)
• Maps were very nice and detailed
• 6 factions
• A lot of patches

Right off the bat, the game is fun, there's no denying that. I think DAMP was well worth the price of entry (60$ in my case) and I've got an amazing value out of it. There's not a lot DAMP improved upon ME3MP, but what it did improved was great.


Now, let's take a look at what DAMP did wrong:

• It simply wasn't ready at launch (bugs, weekend challenge starting 2 weeks after launch, etc.)
• The loot system allowing duplicates on top of abysmal drop rates
• Loot is pretty badly balanced, you have countless useless items while only 1 or 2 best in class items for each category
• Took months to get some "real" use for crafting materials
• Crafting isn't fleshed out very well
• The challenge system being "unique" instead of "repeatable" like in ME3MP
• The challenge system being very rigid, they couldn't even extend a challenge when they messed up
• Difficulty is based on loot, not player skills
• Region locked match making
• No option to select which faction to face
• No true "random" option for quick match ("random" should land you in a lobby marked as "random", "any" should land you in any lobby)
• Only 3 maps for over 8 months, a 4th map was all we got
• While interesting, multiple version of the same map is still the same freaking map
• Associating weapons to a specific map made it even more repetitive than it already was
• Narnia
• Doors that requires a class forces you to play something you don't like
• Doors that requires a key to open, that single thing have cost DAMP at least 75% of its player base...
• Character movement is sluggish compared to the instant response we had in ME3MP
• Lots of player commands needed to be validated by the server before being applied, this made playing the Virtuoso a hellish endeavor with a small amount of lag
• Melee characters were not designed to close in fast enough which made Range character the clear winners until Nightmare landed
• Making players unlock a dodge "move" instead of being an innate ability like in ME3MP
• Badly balanced skill trees
• XP being badly balanced among characters and skills
• Promotions giving stats made the difficulties almost irrelevant
• No real HQ like ME3MP had
• Connection problems (drop, CTD, black screen, etc.)

I obviously missed a lot of things, but it's very alarming to see that most of the things DAMP did very wrong are essential systems that actually keep the player interested.


All in all, I think the game is more good than bad. I had a lot of fun, mostly because of the amazing players I've had the pleasure to play with. Still, I feel like it could have been at least twice better than it is right now, so probably 100x better than at launch... All DAMP really needed was a better structure, someone who had the right vision from the start, not 6 months after launch when Bioware finally made a real contribution. We shouldn't have had to suffer 6 months to actually see the potential of the game. I think this is what cost DAMP the most, the game wasn't ready at launch and it completely destroyed its player base. Those that kept playing eventually got their money's worth though.


Finally, here's what I hope MEA will improve over DAMP and ME3MP:

• Get a community manager, relying on your devs' free time is pathetic and there's more than enough to do for a full-time job
• Difficulty should be based on player skills, not loot. ME3MP did that right
• Get back to repeatable challenges, it allows us to play whatever we want, don't shackle us into what you want us to play
• Every item should count, make them progress like in ME3MP, some requiring more progress than other, but all should be balanced in the end and usable for end game
• Map variety. 4 maps were way too few, changing the spot of 3 vases isn't what I call variety
• No more pots to collect gold, put everything in objectives and optional things like treasure rooms otherwise it distract from the action
• Be ready to kick off weekend challenges at launch, this includes the HQ and all the related things
• When you launch something, be sure the challenges are ready to go too
• Stop launching patches on Thursdays and Fridays, you mess up all the times and then we can't play on weekends... Every good software developers deliver on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for a good reason
• Don't associate items to a specific map/enemy
• The RNG/Store needs to be severely remodeled. Either allow us to unlock whatever we need (No RNG at all) or allow us to select a category for chest/crates
• We need more attention to all the items that aren't weapons. In DAMP, amulets and belts were severely lacking. In ME3MP, everything was about guns while it could have been extended for melee weapons or Biotic augments
• Better balanced weapons. DAMP was a big mess on this, axes had no uses whatsoever because you needed the best base damage
• The game is all about using abilities, could you at least make sure every one of them is working correctly before launching the game...
• Cooldowns are more than enough for an action gameplay. Stamina/Mana are good RPG mechanics, but they slow us down. The Saarebas is amazing because you don't need to wait with boring auto-attacks in-between
• Auto-attacks should have relatively the same DPS as an ability while abilities should give you an edge. That way you can just shoot things if that's your thing, but you should also be able to just use abilities if that's your thing. And everything in-between

I'm sure I'm missing a lot here too, but I can't remember everything I've wrote since the ME3MP days

1 things I'd like to mention with more emphasis is a character creator. I know this one is a pipe dream, but this would force a better structure from Bioware and allow us a lot more flexibility. More flexibility would allow for more game longevity as combinations are exponential. On top of cosmetic changes, you could chose 3 skills and based on that you're assigned a class and special bonuses. This has a lot of perks for players like forcing the devs to make each and every skill valuable. Content should also be easier to add since Bioware could simply add skills, maps, weapons, accessories, character models, etc. independantly. Not enough Salarians or Krogans? Never gonna be a problem again. It's easy to do, skills can even locked to certain classes if needed. The amount of replayability and options it would give us the player would be tremendous. It would also make Bioware work more stable as they would need to code things with an open mind instead of locking everything up and getting screwed when used in an unintended way. How bad the code can be when you can't make a Silent Sister open a Warrior door? This need to change, a character creator would alleviate this problem because Bioware would be forced to keep things in mind when they code. It's really a win-win situation for both Bioware and the players.


To conclude, I'm more and more inclined to say MEAMP should be a separate game from the SP. The more they try to tackle the MP on the SP for free, the worst becomes the MP experience at the end. Using the same ressources between both games could improve the profits and give each game the attention they need. I understand why they didn't go that way for ME3 and DA:I as both were the first MP entry in the respective series, but the future MP games could easily stand on their own if done well. They have the player base, they just need to present a better polished product.

[Jugger nuggss]

They'd like their single player back now plz.

Who wants what back?

[ruggie]

I just love how they still think its ok to charge full price for a what bw basically called a sample on old gen. Then force feed us a ps4 for some man girl and a mage so stat dependant its hilarious. No maps nothing. Thank you bw for opening the door to better games than damp. And letting everyone realize what shatty pr you have.

[LearnedHand]

Yeah, it was pretty shady to discontinue support for some older platforms, encourage them to transfer to a new platform (and buy the game again), only to have the entire plug pulled a few months later.

[ThatBruhYouDK]

All that ThirdRace said xD

This is all accurate... I expected no less from you

[Sothalor]

Leaving aside design issues, I think one thing that hammered stuff hard this go-round was tech proficiency. BW as a whole looked pretty clear that they had issues with the underlying engine and tech. This was their first major project with Frostbite, and everything I've ever experienced and seen from games makes it seem Frostbite is... shall we say, temperamental. 

 

While the number of continuing unresolved tech issues is alarming, I hope the studio as a whole learned enough from the entire process of creating DA:I that they can put in place systems and processes to really get a better grasp of their tech moving forward.

[coldsteelblue]

. Some of us might still remember a certain ... incident between a DAMP youtuber and someone working for BW. But after that incident communication was great in my opinion. Nice job!

 

Actually I completely missed that & have been curious about what happened ever since, what actually happened?

 

Thanks

[Domiel Angelus]

Yeah, it was pretty shady to discontinue support for some older platforms, encourage them to transfer to a new platform (and buy the game again), only to have the entire plug pulled a few months later.

 

When the GoTY edition was promoted so highly, I was suspect of the end. Although anyone doing the platform hop to continue single player got a vastly superior deal with the GoTY, since it does have everything so if you didn't buy any DLC at all you're paying the $60 and $45 of that is the three DLCs, $10 is the armor packs and the $5+tax is the basic game plus MP plus the Deluxe Upgrades for the Flames of the Inquisition set. 

 

Considering DA 2 and the ME Trilogy didn't have a GoTY or 'complete' (Trilogy didn't have all the DLC) edition come out, this feels like an effort to at least make the whole "We're cutting old gen off" right by people that bought the new gen to play the game to it's ending. 

 

 

I agree with pretty much all of ThirdRace's insights about what they should keep and what needs to change.

 

The biggest thing ME has over DA that helped MP gear is that in the ME series the weapons have always been created in Serial format. Avenger I to X has always been there, its just changed over time how they gave it to you. In 1 you had to buy them and in the end Avenger X with the right upgrades was ridiculously amazing because the sights visibly shrank the better you got with the weapon, 2 let you upgrade all Assault Rifles as a group and there were obviously better ones to acquire *cough* Mattock *cough*, and lastly in 3 you bought a weapon and then ran it up to 10 with the more expensive ones being the best (the N7 weapons being the exception as I used the Crusader end game as my sniper weapon). Weapon and gear modifications also had a far greater impact because they could be leveled up to at least five, where as in DAMP we got to three at the end of the game cycle. 

 

DA couldn't really compete weapon wise with that because they would have to change the entire system to allow for the minute changes each time you acquired a weapon, and stop giving you that weapon once its leveling cycle completed. This was completely counter-intuitive to the crafting system (no matter how bad) that DAMP was given.

 

We also started with farm more maps, characters and weapons to play with because ME3MP was meant to happen, where as DAMP was a side effect of "We need to fill space" according to the guy that's no longer with the team. The guys we have now made it far better and if they had been handed the project in the first place it would have most likely been far more successful with the player base and would probably be getting more content updates still instead of being cut down with probably four years before another DA title will be dropped. Billy, Blair and Luke (plus all the others working on it that we tend not to name) all did amazing work with the MP, especially considering it was originally just made out of the spare parts lying around on the cutting room floor. 

[Ardent Blossom]

I'm disappointed if this is all the content we're getting. I was hoping for a few more characters at least. There's no elven archer for Pete's sake. Mass Effect multiplayer had so much more to offer in terms of variety. I still fire up the 360 to pug a couple games of platinum now and then. I don't think I'll be doing that 3 years out with Inquisition. It just gets too repetitive. All that being said, I adored Commander Druffy. That was hilarious. 

 

@TheThridRace "1 things I'd like to mention with more emphasis is a character creator."

You and me both. ME3MP had far more character customization in terms of both cosmetics and leveling. I was surprised not to see full character customization in DAIMP. Even if it's technically feasible Bioware probably won't do it because it would cut down on their micro-transactions somehow. Players would whine if they had to instead unlock individual races, genders, classes etc in order to create their dream characters.